Poland is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east, and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. It’s the 9th largest in Europe country with over 38 million people populated the country that makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and one of the most populous members of the European Union. Poland is considered to have one of the healthiest economies of the post-communist countries, and is currently the fastest growing country within EU. Poland is the only member of the EU to have avoided a decline in GDP during the late 2000s economic recession. In 2009 Poland has managed to create the most GDP growth in the EU. So, it’s interesting to get to know how progressive is the Poland’s ICT market and how successful is the e-commerce sector.
Internet penetration in Poland used to be relatively low in comparison with other Internet developed European countries until the beginning of the decade. Thus, in 2000 less than 10% of Poles could get Internet access, reflecting ICT infrastructure in the country to flat on the low stage of progress. However, membership in EU since 2004 has leveraged country’s telecommunication progress, as well as many other spheres of country’s economic development. And by the year 2005 the amount of Internet users in the country totaled almost 28% and by the second quarter of 2009 the volume of Polish subscribers exceeded 50% with over 20mn people connected. That let, Poland occupy the 8th position amid Internet top 10 European countries, leaving Netherlands and Romania far behind.
Relating to ICT sector developing, 2003 digits showed ICT market in Poland to be 4th fastest growing in Europe, at rate of 5% just behind Ireland, the UK and Greece. Meanwhile, Poland's R&D spending on ICT and employment in the sector ranks 16th. Over the last few years ICT market in the country has shown good signs of progress reflecting rapid growth.
Internet connection in Poland is supplied by the variety of means including fixed wire line, wireless local loop, and mobile. The majority of broadband services used to be in their early stages, until the draft Telecommunications Law provided for local loop unbundling for the provision of Internet Services, containing proliferation of solutions such as ASDL, offered by competitive operators and ISPs, with the new Law that came into effect in January, 2001.
About 350 licensed Internet Service Providers are operated in Poland. But only 15-20 ISPs operate nationally, and some of them manage their own networks. Smaller ISPs usually lease links from large networking companies. Most ISPs are active locally and provide other services, such as maintaining www services, training services or ensuring security of the Internet systems. Internet connection is also provided by the two academic Wide Area Networks, NASK and POL, and all the 22 Metropolitan Area Networks. NASK is the main Internet operator, it controls Polish Internet domains, and appeared to be the oldest Internet provider in Poland. NASK is also a member and one of the founders of CENTR, the European Association of Domain Name Registrars.
As for the ADSL Internet service, it’s represented mainly by Neostrada provided by Telekomunikacja Polska S.A. (TPSA). TPSA also offers Internet DSL TP service targeted mainly at business clients. The link availability is guaranteed plus offers static IP addresses and a modem with Ethernet interface.
Currently, TPSA and NASK control more than half of the Polish Internet market.
ADSL service, Net24, is also provided by TP's main competitor Netia. Net24 can be installed on ISDN lines.
You can also get Internet access in Poland trough Multimo provided by GTS Energis for TP customers via BitStream Access and trough DialNET DSL, provided by Dialog.
Concerning cable Internet service, such companies as UPC Live, Vectra and ASTER offer triple play services.
UPC presented "Fiber Power" in September, 2009, offering internet with download speeds from 8Mbps up to 120Mbps, making UPC one of the fastest ISPs in Poland. The top tiers - 50/5 Mbps and 120/10 Mbps - are limited to selected locations: Warsaw, Gdansk, Katowice and Krakow.
In turn, ASTER provides triple play to many cities in Poland, especially Warsaw and Krakow with speeds ranging from 1Mbps to 10Mbps. The internet speeds of their service in Krakow are throttled by half everyday from 12PM to 12AM (with the exception of the 10Mbps tier). In June, 2009 ASTER upgraded their minimum service speed from 512kbps to 1Mbps and have increased the speed of their 6Mbps service to 8Mbps.
Internet access in Poland considered being amidst the most expensive in Europe. This is mostly caused by the lack of competitiveness. Fortunately, new ISPs, like Dialog and GTS Energis, are making their own provider lines and provide with more attractive and cheaper offerings. Recently, the Polish Office of Electronical Communication passed a bill forcing the TPSA to rent 51% of their ADSL lines to other ISPs for 60% lower prices. This move will definitely affect the prices of DSL in Poland.
Internet country code top-level domain or ccTLD for Poland is .pl, administered by NASK. The .pl domain was created in 1990, following the mitigation of COCOM embargo on technological collaboration with post-communist countries. Two year registration agreement is $228 for.pl and $199 for .com.pl, that is considerably higher than the prices in the other European countries ($35 in UK, $89 in Spain or even $139 in Denmark) (http://www.rwgusa.com).
The first subdomain in .pl was .pwr.pl, belonging to the Wrocław University of Technology. In 2003, the internationalized domain names were introduced. Registration of domains containing characters from Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, and Hebrew script is allowed.
The number of functional and geographical domains exists in Poland. The most popular of them are listed below:
• .com.pl, .biz.pl – commerce
• .net.pl – network infrastructure
• .art.pl – art
• .edu.pl – education
• .org.pl, .ngo.pl – organizations
• .gov.pl – government
• .info.pl – information
• .mil.pl – military
• .waw.pl, .warszawa.pl – Warsaw (city)
• .wroc.pl, .wroclaw.pl – Wrocław (city)
• .krakow.pl – Kraków (city)
• .katowice.pl – Katowice (city)
• .poznan.pl – Poznań (city)
• .lodz.pl – Łódź (city)
• .gda.pl, .gdansk.pl – Gdańsk (city)
• .slupsk.pl – Słupsk (city)
• .radom.pl – Radom (city)
• .szczecin.pl – Szczecin (city)
• .lublin.pl – Lublin (city)
• .bialystok.pl – Białystok (city)
• .olsztyn.pl – Olsztyn (city)
• .torun.pl – Toruń (city)
• .gorzow.pl – Gorzów Wielkopolski (city)
• .zgora.pl – Zielona Góra (city)
Interestingly, a lot of Polish registrants create their own second-level domains, directly under .pl. and by 2008 their number exceeded 930,000.
Since the notable growth has been seen on the Polish ICT market, computer services are considered to be the most dynamic and promising sector. Computer services segment increase is much higher than the entire computer sector in the country. The rapid development of computer services continues as the market’s moving towards technology applications and services in place of just technology itself.
The range of computer services offered in Poland includes integration services, computer educational training, consulting, hardware maintenance and services, and data processing. Integration services are the fastest developing segment of the services market. Among equipment maintenance and services, third party maintenance (TPM) represents a growth market, the market for manufacturing services remains level, and services offered by distribution companies is declining. The first application service provider (ASP) projects were signed in 1999 and early in 2000, opening new opportunities for computer services. ASP projects are expected to become more popular in the nearest future and maintain a substantial growth rate.
Internet market in Poland has emerged deeply in the business sector and has penetrated the consumer and household sectors as well. The lowest level of Internet uses represented by households, typical of e-commerce development in much of Central and Eastern Europe and in other emerging economies, is due partly to the poor quality of existing fixed-line telephone networks and the high costs of accessing the Internet. Nevertheless, Polish business community and the government are committed to removing the bottlenecks to further growth of e-commerce.
Over 10,000 commercial Web sites exist in Poland, and 80% of businesses in the country use the Internet. Almost 60% of companies have their own Web sites, and about 320 companies are selling their products online. Such companies as Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and Cisco mostly manage their large and fast-growing businesses over the Internet.
Despite over a half of the population get Internet access, usage of online services, including e-commerce, is relatively low. Use of the Internet by different levels of government is also growing, although the information available to users is sometimes limited. Municipal government Web sites often show documents used for municipal government and samples of standard letters to request services. There are sometimes opportunities for Internet users to give "feedback" to the government through comments on pending budget and planning decisions.
Poland's eGovernment services rank among the bottom six countries. Only 8.3% of public services are available online for citizens, and 37.5% for businesses, well below the average of 36.8% and 67.8% respectively, according to Economist Intelligence Unit. But notably, the amount of businesses using eGovernment is much closer to the EU average.
The value of purchases made via e-commerce in Poland is expected to exceed 15 billion zlotys (about $5.5 billion) by the end of this year, according to the Gemius. National e-commerce is growing by between 30% and 50% a year in Poland, and it is expected to reach the levels of neighboring countries in Western Europe in the coming years. Online sales portals revenue has multiplied by four since 2005, and online sales by hypermarkets is also expected to undergo dynamic development.
Poles are turning to e-commerce for online shopping being affected by the global economic recession. Thus, Poles have started to buy products such as foodstuffs and holiday trips over the internet, which had not previously been associated. According to a GfK Polonia 2009 report, around 3% of Polish customers purchase household products online and 1.5% buy food via the internet. In total 10% of Polish customers shop online and around 20 million Poles have Internet access. One of the main reasons for Poles to turn to e-shopping is the prices that are up to 20% lower than those in standard stores.
Alma, the prominent delicatessen chain, has been developing its online service mainly in large cities of Poland. In the first quarter of 2009 the turnover of its e-store increased by 400% year on year. Another delicatessen chain, Piotr i Pawel, has also been expanding its e-store’s operational area, to 40 cities in the vicinity of Warsaw.
Additionally, electronic appliance chains have been developing online sales. RTV Euro AGD has already launched an e-store in Poland, and Media Markt is planning to start trial e-stores in Germany and Austria in 2009. If the project succeeds it will consider launching an online store in Poland.
Following the rapid development of ICT market and related services, e-commerce sector, including online shopping, has been gaining more and more popularity among Poles, mostly because of the recession. However, one of the main obstacles hindering Polish e-commerce penetration and development is insufficient knowledge about the ways of using the internet in business. Nevertheless, such kind of problems doesn’t seem to be sufficient and are to be easily solved in terms of modern ICT progress.
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